Crash course in tiling

Oh, what a weekend. Our friend Mark came over on Saturday and stayed for a very brave 12 hours to help Kevin with the first leg of the bathroom tiling project. They got a crash course in laying subway tiles in a small space with lots of corners and edges, and ended up getting about half of the wall tiles cut and glued to the walls with Mastick. About halfway through the day, I made a run to Lowe’s and got enough black subway tiles to add a line of them through the middle, which I think looks pretty darned sharp.

Sunday, Kevin worked his ass off for another 12 hours, this time mostly by himself, to get the rest of the wall tiles up and the hex tiles laid on the floor. He didn’t finish the last of it until about 3am, and since the Mastick needs 24 hours to cure before grouting, we’re going to have to put off that part of the process until tomorrow. I’m secretly glad, because Kevin needs the break. My poor dear barely slept last night after we got home, although I did treat him to a backrub before bed. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do something productive tonight but still let him take it easy. I’ve got some angst to share, but first, pictures:

While Kevin and Mark worked tiling over the weekend, I sort of haphazardly flitted from bedroom to bedroom, trying to get painting done and not really accomplishing much of anything. I did manage to get everything but the corners and trim painted in the master bedroom, I got the first coat of paint on the trim in the guest bedroom, and I painted the trim in my craft room (Valspar actually changed the name of the paint I picked out in the previous post to “Swiss Coffee”, so it ended up matching the Behr paint name exactly! Weird.). That might sound like a lot, but it’s really not, and I feel really bad about it.

I have two reasons for not getting much accomplished: 1) I had a blinding headache for several hours on Sunday, making it almost impossible to look upwards or bend over or do just about anything, and this could be attributed to any number of factors, including breathing in too many paint fumes (It’s too cold to open windows, so our ventilation sucks right now); and 2) I really fucking hate painting. I love picking out paint colors, but when it comes down to it, painting is a series of crappy little monotonous detail jobs that I hate. I have no idea how to overcome this to get the job done. At around 9pm on Sunday, Kevin’s brother Kris came over and got to work spackling, painting, and helping Kevin lay the floor tiles. Meanwhile, I gave up on painting and completely scrubbed out our new fridge and cleaned up the kitchen and living room, which I found really enjoyable. The kitchen looks like crap, but at least it’s clean!

On the docket for the rest of this week: grout bathroom, install bathroom fixtures, paint living room, paint hallway, paint stairwell, finish painting master bedroom, finish painting craft room, finish painting guest bedroom, paint bathroom, MOVE. After that, we’ve got the rest of the month to clean the old rental house and get ourselves situated. Oh, and fit Christmas and NYE in there, as well. Busy times.

Any advice on just getting over the paint roadblock? Or should I leave that to the boys and figure out other things to accomplish?

2 thoughts on “Crash course in tiling”

have you tried listening to books on tape? the slow pace is better than music for this kind of detail work, and you can get through some books you’ve been meaning to read. Best books on tape I’ve gone through lately: the George RR Martin fantasy series (awesome because they are so fah king long, you should be able to get through two or three rooms per novel), anything by David Sedaris or Terry Pratchett (his two readers are hysterical.)